The Secret to a Happy Creative Relationship?
Start a furniture studio together, duh
Meet Yihan and Franklin: a two-headed creative power couple and the founders of furniture studio Manifold. Starting a business together during COVID may not be the best idea for most couples, but for Franklin and Yihan it only made their relationship stronger than ever. So they even started a second business — a lifestyle brand called TentTent.
As a testament to their relationship and their flourishing creative partnership(s), Franklin and Yihan have made some beautiful objects together, including a chair that mimics human anatomy, a luggage that looks and feels like a cloud, and what’s bound to be their best project yet: a child that’s on the way. Needless to say, it’s bound to be an exciting future for Manifold.
So, how did Manifold start?
Yihan & Franklin: Both of us had worked in art and design before, and while we enjoyed certain aspects, there were others we disliked. During the pandemic, spending so much time at home led us to naturally gravitate towards furniture design, which became a fusion of the art and design worlds that we had experience in. That's when we decided to start Manifold. It was our first official collaboration, and as character individuals, Manifold has been both a challenge and a solution for our relationship as well.
I had a relationship during COVID and I'm not in that relationship anymore. For some people COVID made them, and for some people it broke them. I love that you found a productive way to wade through COVID as a couple and that it worked for you guys.
Before Manifold, had you designed furniture at all before?
Yihan & Franklin: Technically, we were never trained as furniture designers. But we went to the interactive telecommunication program (ITP) program at NYU, and one of our favorite focuses there was digital fabrication. We were making a lot of physical installations and kinetic sculptures – basically learning how to turn ideas into physical objects. Not a lot of people have kinetic sculptures in their houses, but everyone has furniture. We figured: why don't we take what we’ve learned and apply it to a medium everyone has an experience with?
Do you remember the first thing you made together for Manifold?
Franklin: In the beginning, they were all renders. But by 2020, we remembered that the reason we started Manifold was because we wanted to make tangible things.
Yihan: The first thing we made was the “Ottoman”. Again it was the pandemic and I was lured to the outside world. I found myself looking at the soft clouds in the sky and thinking about the heavy-duty urban furniture in New York that’s made of stainless steel and utilitarian parts. Guess I was sensitive to this contrast and decided to create something out of it. I drew the first sketch on a piece of paper and Franklin played detective, translating it into a practical foundation and the final design we ended up with.
I love the way you describe the mutual translation that happens between you guys – it's really beautiful.
I really liked the skin chair you did. What was the inspiration there?
Yihan & Franklin: The main inspiration there was 3D normal maps where you can basically use textures to sculpt. We wanted to apply that to the real world, so basically using a digital approach to real world fabrication. We also wanted to accentuate it by making it more bionic, so if you look at the pattern, it's full of references to abstract muscle structures.
What’s been the hardest thing about running a shared practice as a couple?
Yihan & Franklin: Tracking and celebrating individual contributions! Oftentimes, as a team it is more intuitive to prioritize the bigger group achievements rather than the small efforts that each person is contributing. And it's worse when you are a couple because you think you are so close that you don't need such attention at an individual level. But in reality, we all need that love.
I saw that you started another account too: TentTent. It’s like a creative finsta. Why is it important for you guys to have that?
Yihan & Franklin: There are often moments when we want to explore something slightly different from what we’re already doing. That’s how we started Manifold. However, even after Manifold, we still had ideas that didn’t fit into that framework.
TentTent, in a nutshell, is a venture that creates clothes and accessories, curating a unique lifestyle that celebrates music, sports, the outdoors, and craftsmanship. For example, we’re currently working on an original cross-body sling bag and other items unrelated to furniture.
For TentTent, we are expanding and partnering with another talented friend @flyingsword.zzz. We believe it’s important to collaborate while staying true to ourselves. It may sound contradictory, but so far, this approach has been a great exercise for us, allowing us to create meaningful content that's authentic and open-minded.
had never heard of them, or their companies before reading this.
I'm a huge fan now though.
very cool stuff, thanks as always!